Automation in the process manufacturing industry is nearly always complex. Not only must automation technologies carefully orchestrate operations, but they must also monitor safety, reliability, efficiency, and these days, even sustainability.
The distributed control system (DCS) is a key part of that equation, but far from the only one. To get the most out of the DCS, operations teams also rely on data from a wide variety of other elements—quality systems, reliability systems, and even the actions of human operators. For a long time, Emerson’s Nathan Pettus explains in a recent article in Automation World, everyone thought the connective tissue would be the manufacturing execution system (MES). As he shares, however, that is not how things played out,
“The MES has a critical role to play—it executes workflows that are slower and more manual than those driven by other automation systems, all while keeping careful records of those activities—but other systems have specific roles to play, too…The solution, then, is not to use the MES to connect all data sources across the enterprise, but rather to seamlessly incorporate the MES as one piece of an enterprise operations platform designed explicitly for seamless integration of critical manufacturing systems.”
Benefits of the MES
As companies move closer and closer to autonomous operation, the MES’s role within an automation strategy becomes increasingly critical. Tools like the DCS are fantastic for handling real-time control elements that move quickly and operate within very specific constraints. However, that is not the only kind of operation happening in the plant,
“Across the facility, the process requires a massive number of slow, variable, physical processes—moving pallets, scanning barcodes, checking inventory, building kits, signing off on critical stages, and more. Some of those processes can be automated, especially with the increase in robotics, but many remain exclusively manual tasks. With manual tasks comes unpredictable variability, something that makes these activities hard to code into other automation systems.”
We often see an MES handling such operations in the life sciences industry, but it is becoming increasingly useful in other industries as well. For example, the semiconductor industry—where accuracy and cleanliness are hyper-critical—semi-autonomous operation is becoming more popular. An MES can help not only ensure correct, clean operations, but can also reduce the need for human intervention for low-value, repetitive tasks.
Great suppliers deliver standards
Many automation suppliers offer MES solutions, but the most effective solutions will be those that are designed as part of an integrated automation solution. For example, Emerson’s DeltaV™ MES is not only a powerful automation tool in its own right, but also seamlessly integrates with other solutions in the DeltaV Automation Platform. That means DeltaV DCS, alarm management solutions, and more, are all ready to interconnect out of the box for more seamless operations. In fact, leading automation suppliers are coming together with industry leaders to continue improving the seamless integration of the technology, with the goal of ultimately building a standard transition layer across industries.
That fully seamless integration layer across all automation solutions from a wide range of different manufacturers is still over the horizon, but that doesn’t mean teams are unable to take steps toward semi-autonomous operation today. Built-for-purpose seamlessly integrated automation platforms like the DeltaV Automation Platform were designed from the ground up specifically for that purpose—taking the complexity out of automation engineering and giving process manufacturers a critical advantage in a very competitive marketplace.
